Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to an electrode manufacturing method, and a fuse device and manufacturing method therefor. In particular, the present disclosure relates to a fuse device having a fuse element that includes a phase change material, and a method for manufacturing the fuse device.
Description of the Related Art
A fuse device (sometimes referred to as an E-Fuse device) is a component commonly found in electronic products. The fuse device can be used for different purposes. For example, the fuse device can be used to switch off redundant memory, or to adjust the resistance and capacitance parameters in an RF (Radio Frequency) circuit (“RC trimming”), by ‘blowing’ one or more fuse elements in the fuse device.
A conventional fuse device in the prior art may include a metal or polysilicon as the material for a fuse element. However, a high current is typically required to blow the fuse element in the conventional fuse device, with the time required to blow the fuse element on the order of milliseconds (ms). The high current (coupled with the required time to blow the fuse element) may result in high power consumption of the fuse device. Furthermore, the high current needed to blow the fuse element may require a switching element (e.g., a transistor) to be connected to the fuse element. This may result in the conventional fuse device occupying a large area on a semiconductor chip, thereby consuming valuable space on the chip.
Alternatively, a fuse element (formed of metal, for example) can be blown using laser light. However, this process is typically performed prior to chip packaging and may result in low manufacturing yield. As a result, the type of applications that can use this (laser) process is limited.